NLB and Clustering and DFS??????

Discussion in 'Windows Server 2003 / 2008 / 2012 / 2016' started by itdaddy, Nov 30, 2006.

  1. itdaddy

    itdaddy Byte Poster

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    :eek: Hey dudes

    this is my issue: we have NLB and Clustering in Exchnage 2003.

    NLB is for http and say ftp servers
    and Clustering is for Exchange with EE 2003.. and I hear you have
    to have a shared physical drive and does it have to be SCSI RAID
    or can it be a simple disk??? 1 HDD? that they share?

    I am totally confused. some one help my dumbness!
    thanks everyone in advance...


    DFS servers; so a DFS server groups share links?
    what for? and you can write your scripts with UNC of DFS server
    and it willl seek out other shares? to help in scripting
    I have heard something like this ??

    So in gist, what if we didnt have DFS or
    Clustering or NLB what advantage do these technologies have
    i have read the white papers on these but understadning them
    is on the tip of my tongue and I cant see them??

    thanks
    sorry they must be dumb questions but I just can see?
     
  2. Phoenix
    Honorary Member

    Phoenix 53656e696f7220 4d6f64

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    shared disk means they both need access to it, so generally a SCSI disk connected to both servers externally, or a LUN on the SAN, this cant generally be accomplished with a single disk


    NLB load balances across servers, providing resiliancy and load balancing
    Clustering sets up an active/passive pairing of servers providing near instant failover prividing HA (High Availability) to applications such as Exchange and SQL

    DFS provides a shared namespace for filestorage and replication so that if a fileserver goes down another one can serve the files with no problem to the users (read, Shared namespace, users can access either server in the DFS cloud with the shared DFS root name
     
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  3. itdaddy

    itdaddy Byte Poster

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    why scsi? does it have to be raid scsi?
    i guess i dont understand you can have
    more than one mapped drive to a disk?
    why cant you use EIDE simple disk or is that why they call
    it dynamic?

    NLB: you can only load balance servers with exact same
    data like they have to have same ftp data, same IIS websites
    how is this done? making clones and then I understand why you do it just dont understand how they are replicated?
    i understand NLB and Domain Controllers concepts
    I guess what i dont understand is how do these clone servers
    stay replicated? same IIS, same FTP data etc..



    DFS: seems the same as NLB clone servers ??

    thanks for your help
     
  4. Phoenix
    Honorary Member

    Phoenix 53656e696f7220 4d6f64

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    they dont have to be SCSI disks, but you wont often find block level shared storage available for EIDE disks

    SATA is more likely as it uses SCSI command structure

    ignore dynamic disks for a minute they are nothing to do with this
    RAID is not required for shared storage either, this again is a seperate concept

    NLB is generally for web farms that have heavy loads and static content or dynamic client side content, often the wwwroot directory is mapped to a common location so only one set of files need to be managed, the servers are used for there processing power in this instance not there storage space


    DFS is NOT the same as NLB, it works very differently and is for a very specific task
     
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  5. itdaddy

    itdaddy Byte Poster

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    say i have a IDE raid controller card with RAID1 going on.
    will this suffice Or should i get say a SATA drive SCSI card and drive both? SCSI commands key here?

    yes, i will ignore DYn disks. and RAID..

    when i hear shared i hear mapped drives?

    okay i understand i kind of thought that but thanks for
    so these servers point to a storage directory of some sort
    and and pull from there when one is unavalaible?
    Amen on that!


    DFS I am not sure what goes on. this is what i understand:
    you have a DFS server which houses mappings to all kinds of
    hosts and their shares.
    the DFS clients look to this host for share resolution and path?
    but what if the DFS goes down? then what?
    why is it confusing to find shares I thought that DNS was used for that? namespace\share.?? why isnt this effecient??

    am i getting it?

    thanks phoenix!
     
  6. itdaddy

    itdaddy Byte Poster

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    hey phoenix
    say i had 2 DCs and on one i had the
    2 ide and the other 2 sata both are raid1 mirror.

    with the one DC2 having sata raid1 can i cluster
    both of them? or do i have to have the scsi raid1 controller
    i have a plan
    thanks
    robert(itdaddy):)
     
  7. Phoenix
    Honorary Member

    Phoenix 53656e696f7220 4d6f64

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    Mate

    MSCS (Microsoft Clustering Server) only works for cluster aware applications
    namely Exchange, SQL and maybe a handful of others

    DCs work in an Multi Master configuration where by each works at all times, they are not in a cluster per se though, they just each hold a duplicate copy of the Directory database
     
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  8. itdaddy

    itdaddy Byte Poster

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    what i want phoenix is i have a FE mx and a BE mx server
    i want the BE MX server with the sata raid1 on it
    and the FE mx server has already EIDE raid1 on it.
    can i make it a cluster with this config and devices
    or do i need a scsi raid1 card for my sata drives
    on my BE server to work a cluster?
    or is a cluster 2 BE mx servers??
    thanks
     

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